Author(s): Shuangning Lyu

Abstract: One major target of critique in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is the culture of American patriotism in the 1960s, shaped by wartime exigencies with great factionalism and antagonism. Through the figures of Yossarian, Snowden, and Milo, Heller exposed patriotism not as a noble ideal but as a tool of exploitation that confines and victimizes individuals within institutionalized illogic. The disillusionment of patriotism arises when attaching soldiers’ deaths to a greater –yet often hollow –political purpose, as in Snowden’s case. Additionally, Milo and his syndicate further exemplify the manipulation of war and patriotism, as the logic of gaining the greatest profit subsumes and commodifies ostensibly moral values, even capable of producing a humanitarian catastrophe. Heller’s portrayal of patriotism as both a moral and economic construct critiques the disjunction between the idealized notions of national loyalty and its practical deployment to perpetuate systems of abuse of power, violence, and greed. By dismantling the presumed sanctity of patriotism, Catch-22 ultimately demonstrates how such constructed virtues can reduce individuals to expendable matter, coerce subjects into complicity or resistance, and naïve-yet-horrifying opportunism, thereby exposing the pervasive force of institutionalized illogic over human life and moral agency.

Keywords: Catch-22, Joseph Heller, institutionalized illogic, patriotism, rejection, manipulation

Article Info: Received: 26 Mar 2026; Received in revised form: 21 Apr 2026; Accepted: 25 Apr 2026; Available online: 28 Apr 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.112.93